Common examples of SSTs include automated teller machines (ATMs), information kiosks, financial services centers, bill payment kiosks, lottery kiosks, postal services machines, check-in and check-out terminals such as those used in the hotel, car rental, and airline industries, retail self-checkout terminals, vending machines, and the like.
When an item is dispensed by a self-service terminal, for example cash dispensed by an automated teller machine (ATM) it is offered for collection by a user. Should the item not be collected by the user it is retracted back into the self-service terminal where it is stored for subsequent verification.
In the case of many ATMs, the location of cash dispensed but not collected by a user is monitored by a global bill recycling unit (GBRU). Typically, retracted cash is placed into a retract bin. Currently, the user who has not collected their cash must request that their account be credited with the correct amount. In order to verify that the cash was dispensed to that specific user the contents of the retract bin must be checked and cross-referenced with an event log, journal, that details the dispense events carried out by the ATM. Once verification of the cash being dispensed and not collected has been made, the user's account is credited with the amount not collected. This is time consuming and laborious for both the customer and the financial institution running the ATM.
In the case of a self-service deposit terminal a bunch of deposited items, for example cheques or giros, are entered at a deposit slot by a user. The deposited items may be returned, dispensed, to the user for any number of reasons. Examples of why media may need to be re-output to the user comprise if the input media is too short or too long, if the input media is dog eared or stained and if image quality of the scan of the input is poor. In addition the user may select to return an item after insertion, or a host or cheque processing application could decide to return an item for business reasons for example the input media has too high or too low a value, the media may not be valid in location where deposit is being attempted (e.g. a US$ deposit in Europe), the cheque may be from a financial institution or business not supported by the receiving financial institution.
If the deposited items are not collected by the user they are often retracted into the device to allow the deposit terminal to remain in use by other users.
There are a number of difficulties associated with the retraction of non-collected items common to both self-service dispense and deposit terminals. These include, but are not limited to, the substitution of some, or all, of the items dispensed by the self-service terminal by the user, or a third party. Additionally, or alternatively, some of the dispensed items may be removed by the user, or a third party, when offered for collection by the user. This results in the self-service terminal being unable to report the status of each of the dispensed items accurately. In particular the location of each dispensed item cannot be reported accurately.
Certain item handling specifications, for example the publicly available CEN XFS IPM specification, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference, have requirements that the media location of each item is reported accurately. However, where substitution, or removal, of an item is possible the media location must be reported as unknown, or inaccurate, as the user, or a third party, has had access to the dispensed items.